Morality

A Christian mentioned to me a few days ago that it's disgusting how Allah tells Muslims to kill all non-believers in the Koran. I would just like to point out, if for no one's benefit but my own, that the bible says exactly the same thing. Christianity is a religion as violent as the Islamic faith, whether its adherents share that violent tendency or not, and it is absurd for Christians to say their's is a "religion of love."

"If they brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which though hast not known, though, nor thy fathers; Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, night unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thing eye pity him; neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the Lord they God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage."

An interesting article discussing the ratio of violent acts in the Bible as compared to the Quran taking into consideration the size of the two books in relation to each other. The Quran is the more violent one.

Two websites with long lists of cruel, violent and irrational Bible verses, nearly all of which conflict with modern morality and rationality entirely.

A list of Jihad verses in the Quran, quite a few of which are arguably worse than the violent Bible verses.

"The Bible has been used for centuries by Christians as a weapon of control. To read it literally is to believe in a three-tiered universe, to condone slavery, to treat women as inferior creatures, to believe that sickness is caused by God's punishment and that mental disease and epilepsy are caused by demonic possession. When someone tells me that they believe the Bible is the 'literal and inerrant word of God,' I always ask, 'Have you ever read it?' Bishop John Shelby Spong.

As an atheist, I would choose to base my system of morality on a sociological, contemporary, naturally selected foundation over a religious background an day. I think my reasons for that are obvious.

In a two hour podcast debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox, Dawkins states that the Bible is full of vicious atrocities and genocides, amongst a variety of other horrible anecdotes and messages, and that if anyone bases their morals on the Christian Bible they are very sick human beings. What Christians have done if pick and choose certain parts of the Bible that they think are moral and have strung them together to form the foundation of Christian morals and their religion of love. However, what made them do this picking and choosing in the first place is something else entirely. It is based on a secular, evolutionary lust for good that comes from days when our ancestors lived together in kin groups and "right" and "wrong" developed naturally. Morals are essentially something social, not something religious. When talking about right and wrong Dawkins does not seem to mean "good" and "evil," only what is socially acceptable and what is not, and what is constructive and healthy for the "hive," as it were, and what is destructive.

"Safety and happiness would mean being satisfied with easy answers and cheap comforts, living a warm and comfortable lie. The daemonic alternative urged by my matured Devil's Chaplain is risky. You stand to lose comforting delusions: you can no longer suck at the pacifier of faith in immortality. To set against that risk, you stand to gain 'growth and happiness'; the joy of knowing that you have grown up, faced up to what existence means; to the fact that it is temporary and all the more precious for it." - Richard Dawkins, A Devil's Chaplain, reflections on hope, lies, science, and love, Pg13

Thank you for the add. I don't know anyone on here yet. I became fed up with only having religious friends just recently and have been looking around online for more freethinkers in my area since I don't know where to look IRL.

I agree with you concerning the violent similarities between Christianity and Islam; I feel like the main difference between the two is that Christianity has gotten a head start on enforcing its blend of repression and violence and Islam is trying to catch up.